SYNOPSIS

OPTIONS/ARGUMENTS

$filepath is the input POD to read and $outputpath is where to write POD syntax error messages. Either argument may be a scalar indicating a file-path, or else a reference to an open filehandle. If unspecified, the input-file it defaults to \*STDIN, and the output-file defaults to \*STDERR.

A list started with e.g. a bullet-like =item and continued with a numbered one. This is obviously inconsistent. For most translators the type of the first=item determines the type of the list.

You have '=item x' instead of the expected '=item N'

Erroneous numbering of =item numbers; they need to ascend consecutively.

Unknown E content in E<CONTENT>

A character entity was found that does not belong to the standard ISO set or the POD specials verbar and sol. Currently, this warning only appears if a character entity was found that does not have a Unicode character. This should be fixed to adhere to the original warning.

empty =over/=back block

The list opened with =over does not contain anything.

empty section in previous paragraph

The previous section (introduced by a =head command) does not contain any valid content. This usually indicates that something is missing. Note: A =head1 followed immediately by =head2 does not trigger this warning.

Verbatim paragraph in NAME section

The NAME section (=head1 NAME) should consist of a single paragraph with the script/module name, followed by a dash `-' and a very short description of what the thing is good for.

=headn without preceding higher level

For example if there is a =head2 in the POD file prior to a =head1.

Hyperlinks

There are some warnings with respect to malformed hyperlinks:

ignoring leading/trailing whitespace in link

There is whitespace at the beginning or the end of the contents of L<...>.

alternative text/node '%s' contains non-escaped | or /

The characters | and / are special in the L<...> context. Although the hyperlink parser does its best to determine which "/" is text and which is a delimiter in case of doubt, one ought to escape these literal characters like this:

/ E<sol>
| E<verbar>

Note that the line number of the error/warning may refer to the line number of the start of the paragraph in which the error/warning exists, not the line number that the error/warning is on. This bug is present in errors/warnings related to formatting codes. This should be fixed.

RETURN VALUE

podchecker returns the number of POD syntax errors found or -1 if there were no POD commands at all found in the file.

EXAMPLES

SCRIPTS

The podchecker script that comes with this distribution is a lean wrapper around this module. See the online manual with

podchecker -help
podchecker -man

INTERFACE

While checking, this module collects document properties, e.g. the nodes for hyperlinks (=headX, =item) and index entries (X<>). POD translators can use this feature to syntax-check and get the nodes in a first pass before actually starting to convert. This is expensive in terms of execution time, but allows for very robust conversions.

Since v1.24 the Pod::Checker module uses only the poderror method to print errors and warnings. The summary output (e.g. "Pod syntax OK") has been dropped from the module and has been included in podchecker (the script). This allows users of Pod::Checker to control completely the output behavior. Users of podchecker (the script) get the well-known behavior.

v1.45 inherits from Pod::Simple as opposed to all previous versions inheriting from Pod::Parser. Do not use Pod::Simple's interface when using Pod::Checker unless it is documented somewhere on this page. I repeat, DO NOT USE POD::SIMPLE'S INTERFACE.

Pod::Checker->new( %options )

Return a reference to a new Pod::Checker object that inherits from Pod::Simple and is used for calling the required methods later. The following options are recognized:

-warnings => num Print warnings if num is true. The higher the value of num, the more warnings are printed. Currently there are only levels 1 and 2.

-quiet => num If num is true, do not print any errors/warnings. This is useful when Pod::Checker is used to munge POD code into plain text from within POD formatters.

$checker->poderror( @args )

$checker->poderror( {%opts}, @args )

Internal method for printing errors and warnings. If no options are given, simply prints "@_". The following options are recognized and used to form the output:

-msg

A message to print prior to @args.

-line

The line number the error occurred in.

-file

The file (name) the error occurred in. Defaults to the name of the current file being processed.

-severity

The error level, should be 'WARNING' or 'ERROR'.

$checker->num_errors()

Set (if argument specified) and retrieve the number of errors found.

$checker->num_warnings()

Set (if argument specified) and retrieve the number of warnings found.

$checker->name()

Set (if argument specified) and retrieve the canonical name of POD as found in the =head1 NAME section.

$checker->node()

Add (if argument specified) and retrieve the nodes (as defined by =headX and =item) of the current POD. The nodes are returned in the order of their occurrence. They consist of plain text, each piece of whitespace is collapsed to a single blank.

$checker->idx()

Add (if argument specified) and retrieve the index entries (as defined by X<>) of the current POD. They consist of plain text, each piece of whitespace is collapsed to a single blank.

$checker->hyperlinks()

Retrieve an array containing the hyperlinks to things outside the current POD (as defined by L<>).

Each is an instance of a class with the following methods:

line()

Returns the approximate line number in which the link was encountered

type()

Returns the type of the link; one of: "url" for things like http://www.foo, "man" for man pages, or "pod".

page()

Returns the linked-to page or url.

node()

Returns the anchor or node within the linked-to page, or an empty string ("") if none appears in the link.